Somehow a connection has been made to the ignition circuit from the charging circuit, otherwise the engine wouldn't keep running with the key off. With the ignition switch off check for voltage at the distributor. If the ignition is hot all the time it will quickly use up the points. Recheck the wiring for the alternator. the wires for the alternator and the ignition system come out the same spot in the harness, are some of the wires mixed up, connected wrong? Could be one of the diodes in the alternator has failed already, or was to begin with, never actually repaired, recheck the alternator for output. The red light will be on at idle with a bad diode, but go out once the engine revs up. The fuel gauge is probably a separate issue. Poor ground connection causing wrong reading, or sending unit in tank has bad connection, or partially saturated float in tank. Best I can come up with, but I'm not an electrical guru either. Armand ----- Original Message ----- From: "bikerfox" <bikerfox@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> To: <amc-list@xxxxxxxxxxxx> Sent: Wednesday, July 29, 2009 9:07 AM Subject: [AMC-list] electrical issues Hi Guys, Had a couple of interesting problems yesterday upon driving my car ('68 AMX) and wondered what your thoughts were, especially you electrical detectives. First, I have a rebuilt alternator installed, belt tension is good, and trickle-charger charges the battery when the car isn't being driven. Yesterday, upon running the engine, alt. light came on (bright alt. light) and gas gauge dropped to ½ full (tank was previously full). So, I checked alt. connections and one wire was off-reconnected and tried again to run the engine. Alt. light on again and gas gauge needle again dropped to ½. I checked my TSM and there's no wire connection at all bet. the alt. and gas gauge-that's puzzling! After driving away, alt. light goes out and gas gauge returns to normal. Now, I can't turn the engine off, no matter which way the key is turned. Arrived at cruise night and parked the car. Later on in the evening, started the vehicle. Alt. light comes on (bright alt. light), gas gauge needle drops below gas level once again, and after driving the vehicle away, alt. light goes off. Still wasn't able to turn engine off with ignition key. So, do I have a defective ignition switch? What about the alt. light? Thanks, Steve -- I am using the free version of SPAMfighter. We are a community of 6 million users fighting spam. SPAMfighter has removed 1591 of my spam emails to date. Get the free SPAMfighter here: http://www.spamfighter.com/len The Professional version does not have this message -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://list.amc-list.com/pipermail/amc-list-amc-list.com/attachments/200907 29/730641cd/attachment.htm> _______________________________________________ AMC-list mailing list AMC-list@xxxxxxxxxxxx http://list.amc-list.com/listinfo.cgi/amc-list-amc-list.com -- Internal Virus Database is out-of-date. Checked by AVG. Version: 7.5.560 / Virus Database: 270.12.26/2116 - Release Date: 5/15/09 6:16 AM _______________________________________________ AMC-list mailing list AMC-list@xxxxxxxxxxxx http://list.amc-list.com/listinfo.cgi/amc-list-amc-list.com